A Shifter Under the Christmas Tree

by M. L. Briers

  “I have no idea, but if things go south, I’m blaming you.”

  “This was not my fault,” he informed her, and she scowled at him then at the sauce, and he got the message and stirred. “He’s half your son, and it was that half that sniffed.”

  “My half would never sniff,” she offered back.

  “Oh, no?”

  “Nope,” she said, grinning to herself. “My half is the smart half.”

  “There’s a smart half to Max?” he asked, chuckling to himself when she slapped him hard on the back.

  “He’s a chip off the old block,” she informed him.

  “Hey – old,” he grumbled again.

  Tanya sighed as she took to waving the chunk of cheese in the air. “Having a little variety in the family might not be such a bad thing.”

  She wasn’t sure a witch could be classed as variety, more troublesome, meddlesome, maybe an accident waiting to happen? But variety was a good place to start.

  “Seriously?” he grumbled. “Why not just invite a she-demon to live with us?” he asked, and then winced on the shake of his head. “Although, it does sort of amount to the same thing.”

  “It does not,” Tanya said, not entirely sure she believed that either. “Besides, Max doesn’t live with us. He has his own cabin.”

  “On our land.” He reasoned. “And it sure doesn’t feel like he doesn’t live here,” Mark grumbled. “We see him for most meals; he brings his laundry over…”

  “He likes my cooking and the way I do his laundry…”

  “Is that it, or does he just like the home comforts of having his mother take care of him?”

  “Like that’s a bad thing,” she said, snorting another chuckle.

  “I’m surprised he doesn’t want you to tuck him in at night,” Mark shot back, and she tossed him a smirk.

  “Who says he doesn’t?”

  Mark rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Oh, leave the boy alone,” she chuckled.

  “That’s just it; he’s a grown man. It’s time he started acting like it and did his own laundry.”

  “Well, that’s rich coming from you. Do you even know how to turn the machine on?”

  “Sure, I’m the one who fixes the damn thing when our daughter overloads it.”

  “Well, I’ll give you that. But now Max won’t have to do his own laundry and neither will I,” Tanya said, wondering what the witch was like. After all, she would be part of their family; she would be a new daughter – she only hoped she wasn’t as much trouble as her other daughter.

  “Ah, only if she knows how to do laundry and if he manages to woo her,” Mark pointed out.

  “He’ll woo her,” Tanya said confidently.

  “I don’t know; she was a pretty tough cookie.”

  “It’s Max, he’ll woo her,” she assured him.

  “She didn’t seem too happy to be a mate,” he informed her, and she grunted.

  “None of us ever are, witch or bear shifter,” she tossed back.

  “What?” Mark said, teasing his mate to a smile. “You loved the idea of being a mate.”

  “Do not mistake my allowing you to woo me…”

  “Allowing?”

  “Well, you’d be dead twenty-six years ago if I hadn’t,” she informed him and got a deep, gravelly chuckle in return. “Don’t mistake that for me being happy to find out that my carefree mate-less days were behind me.”

  “Yeah, you really kicked up your heels back then,” he said, teasing her to another chuckle.

  “I had a wild side,” she shot back.

  “Your bear was your wild side – it wasn’t like you were a party animal,” he said and snorted a chuckle at his own pun – that was until she shot him a hard stare and he cleared his throat.

  “I could hold my own,” she lied. She’d practically been a hermit, and her father had kept her close and kept the males at bay.

  “Because nobody could get near you, you had to hold your own,” he reminded her, and she bounced the lump of cheese off the back of his head. He turned a scowl on her. “But, I’m sure if you had been allowed out, all the men would have flocked to you and I would have had to fight them off with claws and fangs,” he added, sucking up with a cocky grin and the look that said he wanted brownie points for that one.

  “You say the sweetest things,” she chuckled.

  Mark wiggled his eyebrows. “Wait till later, honey; I’ll show you how sweet I can be.” He stepped away from the pot, and she raised a hand and shooed him back.

  “Don’t burn my sauce,” she berated him.

  “Ah, the sound of love in its truest form – don’t burn my sauce,” he said, mimicking her, and chuckling to himself.

  Tanya was at his elbow a heartbeat later, and she leaned in and whispered in his ear. “If you don’t burn my sauce, I’ll show you just how wild I can be later.”

  “Eww, really,” Shauna said, scrunching up her face as she walked into the kitchen, a shopping bag in each hand, and plonked them down on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “I’m getting too old to overhear stuff like that,” she added, turning away to the refrigerator to yank open the door. “I can’t ignore it like I used to.”

  “Then don’t eavesdrop,” Mark said, tossing her a stare as she started to restock the shelves.

  “Hey, you two gave me these big ears to hear with,” she said shrugging. “You can’t blame a girl for having perfect … everything,” she added motioning down her body.

  “I know we didn’t give you that ego,” Mark grumbled.

  “Really?” Tanya asked, snorting a chuckle. “Daddy’s little Princess?”

  “Not my fault, I only got one girl,” he said.

  “You should be grateful,” Lucas said, strolling into the kitchen and sniffing the air that was thick with the scent of dinner. His favourite time of day, and definitely worth hauling his backside over from his cabin for, even if he was short of time as the game would be on in an hour.

  “Damn, another sniffer,” Mark grumbled to himself.

  Shauna punched her brother in the bicep when he reached into the fridge for a cold bottle of juice, but all he did was smirk at her. “Butthead,” she grumbled.

  “Yeah, truth hurts, Princess,” Lucas said, and ruffled her hair before sidestepping her, and moving across the room on fast feet before she got her mean on.

  “Well, now we have another daughter,” Tanya announced.

  “Not yet, we don’t,” Mark said.

  “Wait. What?” Shauna asked, frowning. “You’re pregnant? At your age?” she looked aghast at the news.

  “Now that would be something to celebrate,” Mark said, teasing his mate with a cocky grin.

  “Down boy, never going to happen,” Tanya informed him. Then she turned a hard stare on Shauna. “My age?”

  Shauna looked suitably chastised. “Just saying, it’s a stretch of nature, is all.”

  Tanya ignored that one. She knew it was a stretch and she wasn’t going to argue that fact. “Max found his mate,” she informed them, and you could have heard a pin drop until both siblings burst into laughter.

  “That’ll end well,” Lucas chuckled.

  “Max – wooing?” Shauna said, spluttering more laughter. “On the plus side, a sister would be good, especially if she can hold her own against my brothers.” She offered Lucas a hard glare.

  “Oh, she can,” Tanya said with a snort of a chuckle of her own. “She’s a witch.”

  Lucas stopped in mid-reach for an apple and turned a look of disbelief on his mother, just as Shauna let a bottle of sauce slip from her fingers and cursed when it bounced off her toes.

  “Say that again?” Lucas asked in disbelief.

  “What could go wrong?” Shauna muttered, thinking of a checklist of everything that could and probably would go wrong.

  “Dunno,” Lucas said. “But it’s Max, so we should be prepared for the very worst.”

  “See,” Mark said over his shoulde
r.

  “Just keep stirring the sauce,” Tanya admonished him. “And you two…” She scowled at them in turn. “Play nice when the witch is here…”

  “Here?” Lucas asked. Well, that might be worth missing the game for. Max’s witch mate,” he said with relish.

  “Yeah, what could happen?” Shauna wondered, wincing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ~

  Kaylee knew a couple of things – firstly, she’d sort of known about the bear situation in town, or just on the outskirts because she’d seen the signs. There were bear claw marks on the posts at the entrance to the town that warned supernatural visitors what they heading into, and she had chosen her property wisely when she decided to stay in town for a while.

  Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she’d needed something fast and out of the way, and the town certainly fitted that criteria. But she’d picked a property on the other side of town, although, admittedly she hadn’t realised that the bear clan owned a lot of the businesses in the town.

  Secondly, that even when you thought you had all the angles covered there was always something that you could miss, and she had, and it was a big something – the idea of being a mate to a shifter hadn’t even entered her mind.

  Now she regretted that absence of thought more and more as the moments ticked by in his company. Maybe company wasn’t the right word; perhaps presence was a better way to describe the situation.

  He might have been sitting across from her at the table that was in the far corner of the bar, but from the way he was fidgeting; he appeared to be sitting on pins, and he didn’t have a lot to say for himself. But if grunts were words then he was a master at it.

  It felt like a blind date she’d had once – awkward.

  Well, at least she knew his name – Max – he hadn’t really offered anything more, and she wasn’t really interested in striking up a conversation with him. So, they sat together but apart, which was pretty much the story of her life to date where men were concerned.

  A shifter and a witch – What did they have in common?

  What was there to talk about?

  Kaylee supposed she could ask him if bears really did poop in the woods, she was sure to get a grunt out of that, and he could ask her if she’d zapped anyone recently, or turned a Prince into a frog.

  Apart from the whole mate thing, they were worlds apart.

  She couldn’t deny he was good looking; with his wayward shaggy hairstyle that looked as if he’d just got out of hibernation, his chocolate-brown, soulful eyes, and that square jaw – he was definitely on the hot scale at a ten out of ten, but there had to be something more – right?

  There was more – she guessed – there was the broad-shouldered hard-muscled body of a guy that spent his spare time in a gym, but she guessed his was all-natural. The muscles of his biceps were impressive – she doubted she could make both of her hands meet if she wrapped them around that hard bulge, not that she was going to try, and speaking of bulges, well, he’d had another one of those that had snatched her attention more than once.

  But still, she needed more than that.

  A personality might have been an asset, but he didn’t seem to have one, at least, not one he was showing to her.

  Bear shifters weren’t known for their sparkling conversation with strangers, more grunting – less speaking, and he hadn’t seemed quite right since he’d announced to his father that he’d screwed up, but still, he should have bounced back from that by now?

  So, why wasn’t he talking?

  Why was he only snatching looks at her from beneath his frowny brooding eyebrows?

  If she was a worrier that was full of self-doubt, she might have asked herself if it was her and not him – if there was something wrong with her, but she dismissed that as a bad idea for a conversation starter and just blamed him instead.

  Kaylee supposed she could sit there watching the twinkling of the strings of Fairy lights on the wall behind his head, but her time could have been spent actually doing something instead.

  Finally, she’d had enough of waiting. “Well, this has been enlightening,” she said, sliding to the end of the bench seat and getting ready to push up and be gone.

  She still had things in the cabin to sort out, like Christmas, other things to take care of, like food shopping, and life went on. He’d asked for fifteen minutes of her time, and she’d given him half an hour – she felt she’d been generous enough with her Christmas spirit.

  Max snapped to attention. He cursed himself for not making more of an effort, for getting lost in his brain and running through all the scenarios that could go wrong when what he should have been doing was making sure they got off on the right foot.

  Now she was planning to leave, and he needed to do something. “Stay!” he barked out in a deep gravelly tone that made her jump inside, but on the outside she was a duck – flawless on the water no matter how hard she was paddling beneath.

  “I’m sorry, what part of my appearance made you think I went woof?” she asked and noted that he winced.

  “I just don’t want you to leave yet,” he said, willing words to come out of his mouth. “And you were invited to dinner.”

  “Not by you,” she offered back.

  “Does it matter?”

  Kaylee sat back with a huff. “Kind of, yeah,” she said, expanding her hands on the table in front of her. At least he was finally talking; maybe she should have made a move to leave fifteen minutes ago as she’d planned.

  “Well, I would have done it…”

  “If daddy bear hadn’t got there first?” she mocked him.

  Max leaned in toward the table, placing his forearms down and almost touching her hands before she snatched them away. She scowled at him. “Relax, I wasn’t trying to play handsies,” he grumbled.

  “Good, keep your paws to yourself, and we’ll get along just fine,” she grimaced, that had sounded like she was sticking around and she didn’t want to give any false hope. “For the next few minutes before I leave and never have to see you again…”

  “We’re mates,” he whispered, with a quick look around him to make sure he couldn’t be overheard by the humans that were dotted around the place. Luckily, it was the calm before the storm, and the rush hour hadn’t happened yet.

  “This is not my problem; this is your problem,” she informed him with a smirk and a nod. “I’m only here to clear the air between us as we live in the same town.” For now, she thought, but it wouldn’t be long before she was off again.

  Truth was; she just needed to get through Christmas and then she was on her way.

  “You don’t want a mate…?”

  “Bingo, give the man a prize,” she said, mocking him again. “A cuddly teddy bear?”

  Max ignored her sarcasm. “I get it. I don’t want a witch mate…”

  “There you go then, job done, sorted. I’d say it was nice meeting you, but I’m not going to lie and hurt your feelings,” she said and started to push up from the bench when Max mirrored her move again.

  Kaylee held in place with her backside hovering over the seat and just stared across the table at him. “Oh, Goddess, you’re going to make this a thing, aren’t you?”

  “A thing?” Max took a moment to consider the irony in her words. “It’s not already a thing?”

  “Not if you don’t make it one.” When he grunted in reply, she figured she’d take that as her cue to leave, after all, she’d agreed to a drink, so he didn’t just follow her home, but when she took a step, so did he. That wasn’t promising. “You going somewhere?”

  “Dinner with my parents.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said and went to move off. Max was a good foot taller than her, and when he sidestepped the table and motioned for her to go before him, she had to tip her head back to look up at him. “Seriously? I’ve seen this movie, and I trust ye not.”

  “Movie?” he asked, even if he didn’t want to know.

  What he did know was that she
was mocking him again, and he didn’t much care for it, but it was par for the course with his siblings, and he’d learned to live with it, so it didn’t bother him that much.

  What did bother him was the thought of her walking out of the bar and going her own separate way without him – his bear didn’t like the idea of that either, and it was little wonder that his beast was clawing to be set free given that their mate had all but rejected them.

  Allowing his bear to get a firm hold within him was the one thing that definitely couldn’t happen. Luckily, his father had been all on them since they were kids about keeping their wild side locked down, but still, nothing had prepared him for the internal spin cycle of his thoughts and feelings that came from finding his mate.

  Kaylee hadn’t bothered to answer him; instead, she’d just made a beeline for the door with him hard on her heels. He nodded goodbye to the guy behind the bar on his way out and followed her out into the night air.

  He noted the way that she shivered when the coolness of the winter night swept over her. “Here,” Max said, yanking off his jacket and trying to drape it around her shoulders for warmth, but she was fast in sidestepping it.

  Kaylee looked almost horrified at the thought. “Are you insane?” she asked, and he’d been wondering that exact same thing since the moment he’d scented her.

  “Well, I certainly don’t feel normal if that’s anything to go by,” he admitted and noted how she cocked her head to the side and frowned at him as if he’d just jumped out of a spaceship.

  “Have you ever been normal?”

  “Have you?”

  Kaylee straightened. “True.” She’d give him that cheap shot for free, especially as she’d started it. “But that jacket is yours…”

  “I was wearing it.” Max frowned.

  “It smells of you; it’s been on your …” She’d looked him up and down, and that was when her eyes seemed to cause a disconnect with her brain, and she had the damndest thought about what he’d look like naked.

  “Body?” he offered, giving her a curious look.

  Kaylee snapped her fingers and nodded her head. “That was where I was going with that,” she said, hoping not to sound too crazy, but, if crazy would keep him at bay, she could do crazy. “It’s been on your…” She paused again and raised her eyebrows as she tried to put any and all x-rated thoughts aside and slam the door on those x-rated images.